I was very interested in what G. said about art. His principle of the DIVISION of art into subjective and objective told me a great deal. I still did not understand everything he put into these words. I had always felt in art certain DIVISIONs and gradations which I could neither define nor formulate, and which nobody else had formulated. Nevertheless I knew that these DIVISIONs and gradations existed. So that all discussions about art without the recognition of these DIVISIONs and gradations seemed to me empty and useless, simply arguments about words. In what G. had said, in his indications of the different levels which we fail to see and understand, I felt an approach to the very gradations that I had felt but could not define. Fragments: One

Parts of centers hardly came into these talks. G. said that centers were divided into positive and negative parts, but he did not point out that this DIVISION was not identical for all the different centers. Then he said that each center was divided into three parts or three stories which, in their turn, were also divided into three; but he gave no examples, nor did he point out that observation of attention made it possible to dis-tinguish the work of parts .of centers. All this and much else besides was established later. For instance, although he undoubtedly gave the fundamental basis for the study of the role and the significance of negative emotions, as well as methods of struggling against them, referring to non-identification, non-considering, and not expressing negative emotions, he did not complete these theories or did not explain that negative emotions were entirely unnecessary and that no normal center for them existed. Fragments: Three

“The DIVISION of man into seven categories, or seven numbers, explains thousands of things which otherwise cannot be understood. This DIVISION gives the first conception of relativity as applied to man. Things may be one thing or another thing according to the kind of man from whose point of view, or in relation to whom, they are taken. Fragments: Four

“The same order of DIVISION into seven categories must be applied to everything relating to man. There is art number one, that is the art of man number one, imitative, copying art, or crudely primitive and sensuous art such as the dances and music of savage peoples. There is art number two, sentimental art; art number three, intellectual, invented art; and there must be art number four, number five, and so on. Fragments: Four

“The Absolute, that is, the state of things when the All constitutes one Whole, is, as it were, the primordial state of things, out of which, by DIVISION and differentiation, arises the diversity of the phenomena observed by us. Fragments: Four

” ‘Matter’ may be regarded as consisting of ‘atoms.’ Atoms in this connection are taken also as the result of the final DIVISION of matter. In every order of matter they are simply certain small particles of the given matter which are indivisible only on the given plane. The atoms of the Absolute alone are really indivisible, the atom of the next plane, that is, of world 3, consists of three atoms of the Absolute or, in other words, it is three times bigger and three times heavier, and its movements are correspondingly slower. The atom of world 6 consists of six atoms of the Absolute merged together, as it were, and forming one atom. Its movements are correspondingly slower. The atom of the next world consists of twelve primordial particles, and of the next worlds, of twenty-four, forty-eight, and ninety-six. The atom of world 96 is of an enormous size compared with the atom of world 1; its movements are correspondingly slower, and the matter which is made up of such atoms is correspondingly denser. Fragments: Five

“All the matter of the world that surrounds us, the food that we eat, the water that we drink, the air that we breathe, the stones that our houses are built of, our own bodies — everything is permeated by all the matters that exist in the universe. There is no need to study or investigate the sun in order to discover the matter of the solar world: this matter exists in ourselves and is the result of the DIVISION of our atoms. In the same way we have in us the matter of all other worlds. Man is, in the full sense of the term, a ‘miniature universe’; in him are all the matters of which the universe consists; the same forces, the same laws that govern the life of the universe, operate in him; therefore in studying man we can study the whole world, just as in studying the world we can study man. Fragments: Five

What I heard interested me very much for it connected G.’s system with the system of the Tarot, which had seemed to me at one time to be a possible key to hidden knowledge. Moreover it showed me a relation of three to four which was new to me and which I had not been able to understand from the Tarot. The Tarot is definitely constructed upon the law of four principles. Until now G. had spoken only of the law of three principles. But now I saw how three passed into four and understood the necessity for this DIVISION so long as the DIVISION of force and matter exists for our immediate observation. “Three” referred to force and “four” referred to matter. Of course, the further meaning of this was still obscure for me, but even the little that G. said promised a great deal for the future. Fragments: Five

“Observation must begin with the DIVISION of functions. All the activity of the human machine is divided into four sharply defined groups, each of which is controlled by its own special mind or ‘center.’ In observing himself a man must differentiate between the four basic functions of his machine: the thinking, the emotional, the moving, and the instinctive. Every phenomenon that a man observes in himself is related to one or the other of these functions. Therefore, before beginning to observe, a man must understand how the functions differ; what intellectual activity means, what emotional activity means, what moving activity means, and what instinctive activity means. Fragments: Six

The DIVISION of actions according to the centers controlling them did away with all uncertainty and all possible doubts as to the correctness of these DIVISIONs. Fragments: Six

I am speaking of the DIVISION of attention which is the characteristic feature of self-remembering. I represented it to myself in the following way: When I observe something, my attention is directed towards what I observe — a line with one arrowhead: I — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — > the observed phenomenon. Fragments: Seven

The very first attempts at such a DIVISION of attention showed me its possibility. At the same time I saw two things clearly. Fragments: Seven

“Even our DIVISION of time, that is, the days of the week into work days and Sundays, is connected with the same properties and inner conditions of our activity which depend upon the general law. The Biblical myth of the creation of the world in six days and of the seventh day in which God rested from his labors is also an expression of the law of octaves or an indication of it, though an incomplete one. Fragments: Seven

“From the point of view of ordinary psychology the DIVISION of man into personality and essence is hardly comprehensible. It is more exact to say that such a DIVISION does not exist in psychology at all. Fragments: Eight

“This atom is the smallest quantity of water that retains all the properties of water. On further DIVISION some of these properties disappear, that is to say, it will not be water but something approaching the gaseous state of water, steam, which does not differ chemically in any way from water in a liquid state but possesses different functions and therefore different cosmic and psychic properties. Fragments: Nine

“In order to understand the meaning of the DIVISION into cosmoses and the relation of cosmoses to each other, it is necessary to understand what the relation of zero to infinity means. If we understand what this means, the principle of the DIVISION of the universe into cosmoses, the necessity of such a DIVISION, and the impossibility of drawing for ourselves a more or less lucid picture of the world without this DIVISION will immediately become clear to us. Fragments: Ten

“Because,” G. answered, “laughter relieves us of superfluous energy, which, if it remained unused, might become negative, that is, poison. We always have plenty of this poison in us. Laughter is the antidote. But this antidote is necessary only so long as we are unable to use all the energy for useful work. It is said of Christ that he never laughed. And indeed you will find in the Gospels no indication or mention of the fact that at any time Christ laughed. But there are different ways of not laughing. There are people who do not laugh because they are completely immersed in negative emotions, in malice, in fear, in hatred, in suspicion. And there may be others who do not laugh because they cannot have negative emotions. Understand one thing. In the higher centers there can be no laughter, because in higher centers there is no DIVISION, and no ‘yes’ and ‘no.’” Fragments: Eleven

“In the first place it must be noted that normally in the sex center as well as in the higher emotional and the higher thinking centers, there is no negative side. In all the other centers except the higher ones, in the thinking, in the emotional, in the moving, in the instinctive, in all of them there are, so to speak, two halves — the positive and the negative; affirmation and negation, or ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ in the thinking center, pleasant and unpleasant sensations in the moving and instinctive centers. There is no such DIVISION in the sex center. There are no positive and negative sides in it. There are no unpleasant sensations or unpleasant feelings in it; there is either a pleasant sensation, a pleasant feeling, or there is nothing, an absence of any sensation, complete indifference. But in consequence of the wrong workwork of centers it often happens that the sex center unites with the negative part of the emotional center or with the negative part of the instinctive center. And then, stimulation of a certain kind of the sex center, or even any stimulation at all of the sex center, calls forth unpleasant feelings and unpleasant sensations. People who experience unpleasant feelings and sensations which have been evoked in them through ideas and imagination connected with sex are inclined to regard them as a great virtue or as something original; in actual fact it is simply disease. Everything connected with sex should be either pleasant or indifferent. Unpleasant feelings and sensations all come from the emotional center or the instinctive center. Fragments: Twelve

But I was unable to grasp the principle on the basis of which it would be possible to determine exactly when to make use of such a scale. P. showed me a table made up to the fifth scale and relating to parallel levels in different worlds. But I got nothing from it. I began to think whether it was not possible to unite all these various scales with the various cosmoses. And having dwelt on this thought I went in an absolutely wrong direction because the cosmoses of course had no relation whatever to the DIVISION of the scale. It seemed to me at the same time that I had in general ceased to understand anything in the “three octaves of radiations” from which the first scale of “hydrogens” was deduced. The principal stumbling block here was the relation of the three forces 1, 2, 3 and 1, 3, 2 and the relations between “carbon,” “oxygen,” and “nitrogen.” Fragments: Thirteen

“But objective knowledge, the idea of unity included, belongs to objective consciousness. The forms which express this knowledge when perceived by subjective consciousness are inevitably distorted and, instead of truth, they create more and more delusions. With objective consciousness it is possible to see and feel the unity of everything. But for subjective consciousness the world is split up into millions of separate and unconnected phenomena. Attempts to connect these phenomena into some sort of system in a scientific or a philosophical way lead to nothing because man cannot reconstruct the idea of the whole starting from separate facts and they cannot divine the principles of the DIVISION of the whole without knowing the laws upon which this DIVISION is based. Fragments: Fourteen

“Man, in the normal state natural to him, is taken as a duality. He consists entirely of dualities or ‘pairs of opposites.’ All man’s sensations, impressions, feelings, thoughts, are divided into positive and negative, useful and harmful, necessary and unnecessary, good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant. The work of centers proceeds under the sign of this DIVISION. Thoughts oppose feelings. Moving impulses oppose instinctive craving for quiet. This is the duality in which proceed all the perceptions, all the reactions, the whole life of man. Any man who observes himself, however little, can see this duality in himself. Fragments: Fourteen

“The isolated existence of a thing or phenomenon under examination is the closed circle of an eternally returning and uninterruptedly flowing process. The circle symbolizes this process. The separate points in the DIVISION of the circumference symbolize the steps of the process. The symbol as a whole is do, that is, something with an orderly and complete existence. It is a circle — a completed cycle. It is the zero of our decimal system; in its inscription it represents a closed cycle. It contains within itself everything necessary for its own existence. It is isolated from its surroundings. The succession of stages in the process must be connected with the succession of the remaining numbers from 1 to 9. The presence of the ninth step filling up the ‘interval’ si-do, completes the cycle, that is, it closes the circle, which begins anew at this point. The apex of the triangle closes the duality of its base, making possible the manifold forms of its manifestation in the most diverse triangles, in the same way as the point of the apex of the triangle multiplies itself infinitely in the line of its base. Therefore every beginning and completion of the cycle is situated in the apex of the triangle, in the point where the beginning and the end merge, where the circle is closed, and which sounds in the endlessly flowing cycle as the two do’s in the octave. But it is the ninth step that closes and again begins a cycle. Therefore in the upper point of the triangle corresponding to do stands the number 9, and among the remaining points are disposed the numbers 1 to 8. Fragments: Fourteen

“If a man were able to work on himself everything would be very simple and schools would be unnecessary. But he cannot, and the reasons for this lie very deep in his nature. I will leave for the moment his insincerity with himself, the perpetual lies he tells himself, and so on, and take only the DIVISION of the centers. This alone makes independent work on himself impossible for a man. You must understand that the three principal centers, the thinking, the emotional, and the moving, are connected together and, In a normal man, they are always working in unison. This unison is what presents the chief difficulty in work on oneself. What is meant by this unison? It means that a definite work of the thinking center is connected with a definite work of the emotional and moving centers — that is to say, that a certain kind of thought is inevitably connected with a certain kind of emotion (or mental state) and with a cer-tain kind of movement (or posture); and one evokes the other, that is, a certain kind of emotion (or mental state) evokes certain movements or postures and certain thoughts, and a certain kind of movement or posture evokes certain emotions or mental states, and so forth. Everything is connected and one thing cannot exist without another thing. Fragments: Seventeen

“And this is particularly important in connection with the study of the DIVISIONs of centers in oneself. Mention has been made of this several times before. You must understand that each center is divided into three parts in conformity with the primary DIVISION of centers into ‘thinking,’ ’emotional,’ and ‘moving.’ On the same principle each of these parts in its turn is divided into three. In addition, from the very outset each center is divided into two parts: positive and negative. And in all parts there are groups of ‘rolls* connected together, some in one direction and others in another direction. This explains the differences between people, what is called ‘individuality.’ Of course there is in this no individuality at all, but simply a difference of ‘rolls’ and associations.” Fragments: Eighteen